Lucinda Williams interview: Living a 'Blessed' life

Lucinda Williams performs at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans on May 5, 2011. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Long considered one of America’s greatest songwriters, Lucinda Williams has made a career out of reality-based songs of pain, anger, anguish and loneliness.

So what happens when the so-called “Queen of Heartbreak” finds personal happiness?

She’s doing just fine by the sounds of it, even referring to herself as an “anomaly,” during a recent wide-ranging interview. Married in 2009 to Tom Overby, who co-produced her latest album “Blessed,” Williams is writing more than she ever has, and is back out on the road. She’ll be playing Mountain Park in Holyoke on Saturday night, along with Amos Lee.

During the interview she talked of her approach to her craft, her poet father Miller Williams, her favorite cover versions of her own songs, how she’s kept every letter she’s ever received, and much, much more.

The video for the song “Blessed” is very compelling, as are the characters that are featured. How did you come up with the concept for the song, what motivated you to write about blessings?

It’s such a complex song. It can mean different things to different people. It’s hard to really come up with one explanation for it. It started out as a little seed of an idea and grew into this other thing. I was trying to say that a lot of times we’ll look at someone like the girl who might be selling roses and assume that person might not be happy because of the kind of job they have. A lot of people you see in the photographs (in the video), you might just assume that. That’s part of the concept of it - that in order to feel blessed you have to have this or you have to have that. But it’s different for different people as each of these characters say.

Everybody has a different life experience. For instance the character who says he felt blessed because he used to be in a gang and now he’s not. It’s all relative. Blessings come from different places, from different pieces, from all walks of life. It ended up a very metaphorical song. I think mostly when people think of blessed you think “Oh wow you have this gift you have this tangible thing.” But the idea is that we’re blessed by the girl selling roses showing us how to live. It’s more philosophical. There are blessings all around us. You know how sometimes you feel sort of humbled? Some little thing will happen in the day and they’re just little gifts. You might be talking to a homeless person on the street and he or she will start telling their story and during the course of the conversation you discovered something amazing about the person and that’s a gift that you got that you wouldn’t expect. It’s the unexpected. We were blessed by the homeless man who showed us the way home.

IF YOU GO

Some people think about religion when they think of blessings. But the older woman in the video says religion is horrible and has nothing to do with the concept. What’s your take on the connection between religion and blessings?

I refer more to spirituality than religion. The connotation of religion is organized religion and that’s a whole other deal. When I named the album “Blessed,” I didn’t want there to be that connotation, I was concerned about that actually. That’s not what it’s about.

So it’s not your “Slow Train Coming.” (A Bob Dylan album recorded after his conversion to Christianity)

No. There are certain connections with all that too but it’s not necessarily a biblical reference. See it also depends on how you pronounced the word. Some people say “bless-ed,” but I knew that once people saw the photographs and the images they would understand.

You’re touring this summer with Amos Lee, and you sang the song “Clear Blue Eyes” on his recent album. How did you get to know him and decide to collaborate with him?

He reached out to me when we were recording this last album. I was in the studio anyway so they sent the track in and I sang on the song. He was in town here in L.A. playing with his band and I was just completely blown away when I saw him live, I sat in with him we hung out backstage. I was really impressed with him musically and personally, everything. I’m really looking forward to doing some shows with him.

Speaking of collaborations, you’ve got Elvis Costello on the new album, but instead of having him on a vocal duet you’ve got him playing some pretty raging guitar. How did that come about?

That was my husband/manager’s idea, as were a lot of things like the idea of having people write “blessed” on those signs. That was Tom’s idea. We were finishing up the record and Elvis happened to be in town he was finishing up his record with T-Bone Burnett. Tom suggested bringing in Elvis on guitar. I was actually surprised, I said “Really?” Tom said “Oh yeah, he’ll be great on these songs.” Elvis e-mailed Tom back and said “Are you sure you sent this to the right guy?” (laughs) Because he’s not used to being asked to play guitar. But he did, he shredded, he just blew everybody’s mind.

That song, “Seeing Black” is about suicide. Your writing is filled with questions and there seems to be a sense of anger from those left behind. You’ve written about this very difficult subject before, for example in “Sweet Old World.” Has the writing process helped you personally in dealing with the deaths?

Absolutely. That’s probably why I started writing when I started. When I was a kid, 8, 9, 10, probably to the age of 14 or something, I kept a journal, a diary. Once I started to get into songwriting, there was no need to keep a journal anymore because my songs are so much that way. That’s exactly what it is for me, it’s very cathartic.

Do you still have those journals?

Yeah.

Do you ever read them?

Sometimes. I have them. I keep them all in this trunk, I’ll be out in the garage looking for something. I keep all my old calendars. I’ve have every letter I’ve ever received. I have three big trunk size plastic tubs, I have all this old mail and old calendars.

You’re a pack rat.

Well for that sort of thing, the personal memento stuff.

So many people are losing that sort of thing due to email and a lack of letter writing.

I know, once I started emailing, I stopped writing the physical letters. I kind of miss that.

Emmylou Harris has sung “Sweet Old World,” Mary Chapin Carpenter had a huge hit with your song “Passionate Kisses” and many of your songs have been covered by other artists. Do you have a particular favorite, or an obscurity that people might not know about?

Yeah there is this band called The Schramms out of Hoboken N.J. They did an incredible version of “Side of the Road” that I don’t know if a lot of people have heard. I guess that was in the early ‘90s I think. Then there’s this Canadian band called Prairie Oyster, they did a really cool version of “Price to Pay,” those are two of the more obscure ones that come to mind.

You were married in 2009. Now there’s an old theory that personal happiness can take the passion out of one’s writing, and I know you’re not a fan of that theory. But do you believe that has happened to some folks? And how do you avoid it?

The thing where people get married and lose their edge? That’s just them. How do you explain poets and novelists who get married and have kids and teach at the college and publish books? For some reason that myth is associated more in the music world and the entertainment world…The problem with that myth is that once you’re not heartbroken anymore you have nothing to say which is just completely ludicrous to me. Personally I think the heartbreak song is the easiest to write, those are just a dime a dozen ... My baby left me, I’m so sad, blah, blah blah. I know some artists who had horribly tortured childhoods but never touch on the subject, that’s just personal choice.

The album’s opening track, “Buttercup” certainly has plenty of venom for someone who used to make you melt and has messed up his life in a big way. Is that a composite character from the past or based on one person?

That was left over from another one, the same guy I wrote Jailhouse Tears about. See that’s the other thing, you can go back and write about stuff there might be a song. I came up for the idea for that song when I was working on the “Little Honey” album. “You look like a little kid with bruises on your knees.” Some people thought it was about Tom, and that there must be problems in the marriage, a bad boy song or whatever (laughs). That’s the other thing, there’s a lot of stuff and it doesn’t have to be about Tom and me or whoever I’m with and me.

A few years ago you performed your entire catalog during a string of five consecutive nights in different cities, doing a different album each night. The albums are available on your website,www.lucindawilliams.com. A lot of artists have followed that idea, or done similar things, but I believe you were the first to do that. How did you come up with the idea?

That was Tom’s idea (laughs heartily) I think I might have been the first one but I don’t want to take credit, I know Wilco did that but I think it was after we did it (Williams briefly pauses and checks in with Tom) He’s saying Cheap Trick did a couple of their albums, but we’re the first ones to do the entire catalog, with the exception of the first two Folkways’ albums, which we later went out and represented.

Your dad, Miller Williams is a very accomplished poet. First of all, how is he doing these days, and when you look back at your body or work do you see areas that may have been influenced by his style of writing?

Yeah. He’s doing great. He just turned 82 in April. Yes, as a writer, it’s usually referred to as the economics of writing. He taught me a lot about that. That’s one of the first things I learned from him. Edit, edit, edit.

”Soldier’s Song” contrasts the relationship between a soldier fighting war and the seemingly ordinary life of his family left behind. What attracted you to that subject?

That’s one that I came up with the idea for I don’t know how long ago. I had a couple of lines with a basic theme, but didn’t know really what to do with it or where is it gonna go. I kind of fiddled around with it. Sometimes it takes a while for those to transfer. My dad has a poem that deals with two different lives connected but separated by time or travel or whatever. In this case, there’s the soldier and the war, and the wife’s at home with a small child. He knows what she’s going to be doing at any given time of the day because she has such a routine.

There’s a poem that my father wrote called “Love Poem” from the book, “The Only World There Is.” In the poem, my dad wrote a line “We sit at the breakfast table reading the morning paper/My wife’s making coffee/It’s 3 a.m. in Jakarta.” He’s talking about their daily routine, but in the meantime there are other things happening across the globe. The other (influence) was the song “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He’s driving away, but he’s saying, “By the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be rising.” And there’s also the Jimmy Webb song “Galveston,” which is a more subtle song about war but the soldier is thinking about being on the beach in Galveston. I sort of put all that stuff together.

Do you think there are any younger artists who take songwriting seriously and who are also seeing significant commercial success?

One would be Ryan Adams, I think he’s absolutely brilliant. The other one is the husband/wife team who call themselves Over the Rhine. I think their writing is really, really good.

What’s the shortest time in which you’ve ever written a song and what song took you the longest to complete?

Songs like “Drunken Angel,” took months and months, and “Lake Charles.” The more narrative songs like that. “Soldier’s Song,” took quite a bit. It used to take me longer but I’ve developed the craft more since I’ve been doing it more. It depends on the type of song. “Seeing Black” didn’t take too long, and neither did “Born to Be Loved.”

What’s next for you after this tour?

We come home for four weeks then go out again, and continue the touring process to the end of the year then start up again at some point next year. I’m already itching to get back in the studio with some songs we didn’t cut for this album and I’ve been working on some new ones. I guess I’m an anomaly in that I’m 58 years old, newly married and more prolific.